Most child language tests are based on their developers' knowledge of mainstream language varieties, which can lead to misdiagnosis of speakers of non-mainstream dialects. The accurate diagnosis of language problems is of utmost importance in a country like South Africa, where languages and dialects often reflect socio-ethnic boundaries, and where access to clinical intervention is limited in certain communities. This article discusses the translation and adaptation of an American test, which has been proven to be dialect-neutral, for use with child speakers of a non-standard dialect of Afrikaans. The items, picture material and target responses of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation - Norm Referenced ( Seymour, Roeper en De Villiers 2005a) (hereafter Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation) were adapted so as to be culturally appropriate for use with South African children. Attention was also given to dialectal differences in order to prevent discrimination against speakers of non-standard dialects of Afrikaans. This test was administered to 48 rural coloured speakers of "Kaaps" Afrikaans who were deemed typically developing by their parents, in order to determine whether it would diagnose their language as typically developing. Previous research had shown that an established Afrikaans-medium test, namely the Afrikaanse Reseptiewe Woordeskattoets "Afrikaans Receptive Vocabulary Test" (Buitendag 1994), classifies the language development of typically developing learners from this community as delayed. It was predicted that the adapted and translated version of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation would yield a more accurate diagnosis than the Afrikaanse Reseptiewe Woordeskattoets. However, it was found that the Afrikaans version of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation, despite careful attention to cultural and dialectal aspects, still diagnosed the language of these learners as deviant. Further testing with the adapted and translated version of the Diagnostic Evaluation of Language Variation on coloured speakers of Afrikaans from other communities, both urban and rural, will indicate whether the language of the learners in this study was indeed deviant, or whether further adaptation of the testing instrument is required.

Until the late nineteenth century, trauma was a strictly medical term referring to physiological wounds or scars. Due to the work of Charcot and Freud, amongst others, the meaning of the word trauma was moved from physiology to psychotherapy, eventually indicating psychological wounds rather than physiological scars. In the 1980s trauma became an official psychotherapeutic diagnosis. What followed was a plethora of research on how to heal from trauma by talking it out, by facing it down. The tools deployed to help trauma survivors were largely verbal and emphasised narrative reconstruction and reflection. In this article these tenets of trauma treatment, which have at their centre the healing power of narratives (stories), are critically examined using Ingrid Winterbach's novel Niggie (translated in 2005 as To hell with Cronjé), which was set in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). Attention is given to the ways in which characters use verbal and written narratives in an attempt to come to terms with their traumatic pasts, as well as the level of success they achieve in the process. The discussion is based on the sceptical assumption that mere narrative reconstruction and/or reflection do not necessarily guarantee recovery or healing. The different trauma narratives in Niggie, but also Niggie as a trauma narrative, confirm, rather, the idea that traumatic experiences may in some instances resist or seriously undermine narrative representation.

This article discusses the portrayal of various aspects of postcolonial resistance in the historical novel Islands by Dan Sleigh. The article place emphasis on the strategies of resistance followed in this novel by referring to structural aspects like the author, narrator and focalisation; the undermining of historiography and master narratives, the description of colonial space and the Other as constructs in colonial and postcolonial literature. The article concludes that Islands can be read as a historical novel with a strong postcolonial vision.

A performative analysis of the metapicture dynamics of a Norman Catherine print, Mirror Mirror (1991), serves as a platform to probe after-imaging processes effective in portraiture which integrates urban settings into the eventual portrait likeness. Aspects of such processes are examined in visual material with metapicture features and against a backdrop of current interdisciplinary debates in visual culture studies on "iconoclash" and "iconic turn" issues. As a form of sensory perception guided by the imagination, after-imaging normally operates across the boundaries between conscious and unconscious, personal and impersonal, individual and communal experience. A review of selected examples of mirror images, faceless figures and disembodied facial features demonstrates the extraordinary potential of after-imaging in the making and reception of art which explores these areas.

The need for a fusion between technological singularity and transcendental monism is posited as the best compromise for sustainable alternative futures. Four possible futures could emanate from a combination of two types of technological progress and metaphysical monism : (a) Technological singularity and material monism, which could lead to the end of humanity as we know it and usher in the era of transhumanism. (b) Linear change and material monism, which could lead to an extrapolation of the present into the current future, i.e. development and underdevelopment, haves and have-nots, ecological-environmental unsustainability. (c) Linear change and transcendental monism, which could lead to consciousness as the dominant causal reality in a low-technology world with sustainable naturalism. (d) Technological singularity and transcend-dental monism, which could lead to completely new futures where highly conscious humans use technology (innovation) as a means to sustainable higher-order living expandable to the universe as a whole.

Humanity is unique within the confines of the known universe and cannot be allowed to transform into mere intelligent non-biological entities. The challenge, therefore, is to align the value system of the psycho-sociosphere with technological progress and thinking to create a new paradigm that will lead to sustainable higher-order living.

Marlene van Niekerk's novel Agaat (2004) gained great praise for its complex system of references. In the present article the references to classical music are traced. Milla, the main character, received music training and yearns for the intimate feelings she experiences when listening to classical music. But her taste in music creates a barrier between her and her husband Jak. She tries to influence her son Jakkie to be excited about classical music. Agaat is also exposed to classical music on the radio and on records. An investigation of the references to classical music in the novel indicates that Van Niekerk possesses a thorough knowledge of it. She uses these references to paint the characters, their thoughts and their circumstances. In this process she refers to the works of many composers (who are not always mentioned by name) : Bach, Bizet, Brahms, Dvořák, Elgar, Falla, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Rachmaninov, Schubert, Schumann, Smetana, Verdi. Her skillful inconspicuous incorporation into the text of changed and/or adapted lines from poems set to music by composers of the German Lied (Brahms, Mahler) is impressive.

The aim of this article is to identify a metatextual dialogue between Marlene van Niekerk's novel Memorandum : a story with paintings (2005) and the oeuvre of the artist Marlene Dumas. Memorandum is characterised by multitextuality, where the reader is drawn into a game of reference and deconstruction and deconstruction of reference, of recognition and alienation (Van Niekerk 2006). Although Dumas is not mentioned explicitly in the literary text, she may, based on Umberto Eco's so-called intertextual knowledge (where the reader or onlooker has the ability to recognise indirect references to other texts), be identified as being involved by means of a creative exploration of Memorandum. Thus the focus is on the conversation and the consequent merging of literary and visual texts. In particular, the catalogue essay for a retrospective exhibition in New York (2005) titled "Marlene Dumas - Selected works" can be seen as an important metatext. The introduction to the catalogue, a detailed essay by Marlene van Niekerk titled "Seven M-blems for Marlene Dumas", explores the essence of Dumas's work in an original and witty way. My conclusion about this essay is that the emblems with which Van Niekerk credits Dumas can also be applied to Van Niekerk and Memorandum. An exploration of these emblems may reveal the most important aspects of the novel and at the same time change and enrich the reading experience of the novel. Furthermore, it is Van Niekerk's interpretative articulation of Dumas's oeuvre which not only sheds light on Dumas's oeuvre, but also, if they are associated with each other, on Van Niekerk's own work. The multidimensionality of Van Niekerk's writing process and possible thought processes are consequently also involved.

Language legislation is increasingly seen as an important mechanism in establishing an official dispensation in multilingual countries. As a unique form of intervention in the use of a language, legal intervention usually features in the form of constitutional language provisions (in either an extensive or a less extensive format) and in the form of a central language act, such as the Quebec Official Language Act (Q.O.L.A.1974), in other words, legislation which is solely aimed at regulating the use of an area's official languages. Legal intervention can also occur in more general legislation which includes language provisions, as is the case in broadcasting legislation, legislation in education, etc. Legal intervention could, furthermore, also feature as regulations with regard to language drawn up by state departments or even as case law on language. Legal intervention in the use of language thus presupposes, to a greater or lesser degree, a form of language prescriptivism, an essential characteristic of South Africa's pre-1994 language dispensation. The relative success of the RSA's previous official languages dispensation can be related to the principle of "statutory bilingualism", a constitutionally entrenched form of official bilingualism. With the institution of the post-1994 dispensation attempts have been made to avoid an extreme form of language prescriptivism despite the fact that a form of official bilingualism is still required. This article investigates the legal mechanisms that have been put in place since 1994 in order to regulate the RSA's "new" form of official bilingualism. This is done by analysing three sets of language legislation which are considered to play a cardinal role in the establishment of an official language dispensation in other countries, i.e. directives on the use of official languages in legislation, citizenship and the courts. One of the central findings is the lack of alignment between the 1996 constitutional provisions regarding official bilingualism and the language provisions of the three sets of language legislation investigated. This dissynchrony leads to the establishment of legal grounds for English to be elevated as a supra-official language and to a new form of language hierarchy. As these developments are contrary to the constitutional language provisions, it is concluded that a return to a more pertinent form of language prescriptivism has probably become unavoidable.

In this article it is argued that common attributes exist between aesthetic experiences and educational experiences, and between artistry in the worlds of the arts and education. By means of interdisciplinary connections the attributes of artists and aesthetic experiences can be identified and then serve as direction indicators for the solution of problems in the classroom. Artists have to know how to get and keep the attention of their audiences, and teachers, by studying their artistry and performances, can identify strategies used by artists that might be useful in classrooms. During a workshop where 20 teachers from a secondary school in Bloemfontein, South Africa, studied a performance of Cliff Richard, the attributes of his performance and artistry were analysed within the framework of Appreciative Inquiry (AI). By coding the insights of the teachers and the presentation of these insights by means of a radar graph, nine attributes of the artistry of Richard are discussed and connected to educational theory. The relevance of these attributes for problems in South African classrooms and for the creation of exceptional learning experiences is indicated.

There exists in Afrikaans poetry an extensive collection of poems in which Afrikaans poets respond to Breyten Breytenbach as a public figure and to his poetry. This article focuses on those poems in which Afrikaans poets respond to Breytenbach's poetic persona, his poetics and his poetry. The article gives an overview of those poets who responded to Breytenbach's poetry and the nature of their reactions. A wide spectrum of these responses is discussed : Wilhelm Knobel's poems in the form of letters written in the 1960s, Cornelius van der Merwe's imitation of Breytenbach's poetic style and vocabulary in his 1967 debut, Geboorte is nodig [Birth is necessary], poems from which an identification with Breytenbach's poetic persona and his poetics emerge, poems in which his poetic praxis is satirised, ridiculed and parodied, poems in which his rewritings of his predecessors are continued, and various kinds of intertextual citations from his work. Finally some conclusions are drawn on the basis of the evidence that these poems present.

The article presents an interpretation of the proposal of Diogenes of Sinope to use knucklebones as currency in his ideal state. The saying is contextualised against the background of the origins of money in archaic Greece and the meaning attached to the Greek term for coinage, nomisma. Research has shown that the use of money from the start implied state involvement and fiduciarity. Taking a cue from a passage in Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics it is argued that the Greeks put money in the category of nomos, that is, based on social custom and thus with only relative value. In the anarchistic Cynic state, money (as generally understood) could not be tolerated as it clashed with the ideal of a life "according to nature" which for the Cynics meant possessionless self-sufficiency. Diogenes' proposal can only have parodic intent. By reducing money to a mere token without intrinsic value he wanted to draw the attention of his fellows by way of humour to social obsessions with coined money and with possession in general.

N.P. Van Wyk Louw's views in the early 20th century of the individual and national identity constructions of the Afrikaner and the accompanying literary and sociocultural contexts are founded mainly on his redefinition of the concepts nation, individual, identity and nationalism. In the essay collections Berigte te velde and Lojale verset (1939) Louw presents a new grasp on these concepts in which the interaction between history, language and religion and the relation between this interplay and the unsteady political and socio-economic spheres are emphasised. His reinterpretation of Afrikaner identity also indicates the connection between the instability of identity and the fluid nature of national and individual contexts. In this article Louw's innovative conceptualisation of the function of history, language and religion in Afrikaner nationalism and identity is investigated against the social background of the thirties of the previous century and within the intellectual space of related interpretations between 1902 and 1943. Specific reference is made to Muller (1925) and Diederichs (1936) in this regard.

Since the Population Policy for South Africa was tabled in Parliament in 1998, there has been a growing recognition by government of the relationships and interaction between people and place and development, and the links between human activity and the environment. The trends and changes in, and status of, the relationships between population, environment and development - i.e. the Population-Environment-Development nexus - must be continually monitored and assessed in order to track the progress made in improving the quality of life of all South Africans. This article reflects on some trends and changes in the South African population structure over the past ten years, i.e. since the launch of the 1998 Population Policy. Such a reflection is essential in order to inform the broader interface of population, environment and development in the country and, more specifically, to explore some of the emerging dynamics and key challenges at the interface of population, environment and development in the years to come. The article is mainly based on research conducted for the ten-year review of the Population Policy for South Africa (1998) as commissioned by the Chief Directorate : Population and Development (National Department of Social Development). For purposes of the article, however, the focus falls mainly on the population factor of the nexus, and specifically on (i) the demographic trends and changes over the past ten years and (ii) how these changes interlock to inform future dynamics and challenges at the interface of population, environment and development in the country.

This article is a short tribute to Dutch poet Ad Zuiderent on the occasion of his 65th birthday, with an emphasis on his links with South Africa and Afrikaans literature. His poem "Telefoon uit een thuisland" is analysed with reference to the functions of language as described by Roman Jakobson, but more specifically by relating it to the echo chamber of discourse regarding poetic descriptions of the South African landscape. Reference is also made to the dialogue between the Dutch and Afrikaans literary systems. Zuiderent's Dutch poem and my translation of it are included.